Epilogue: Scientific Theory-Change and Rationality – Lakatos and the “Popper-Kuhn Debate”

Abstract

Lakatos’s career in the West began in the Philosophy of Mathematics. His interest in the Philosophy of Science was kindled by the differences in the accounts of scientific progress given by his mentor, Karl Popper, and by Thomas Kuhn. These differences were highlighted in a debate between Kuhn and Popper at the Bedford College Colloquium in 1965. This paper examines some of the history of that debate and Lakatos’s contributions to it. The chief point at issue between Kuhn and Lakatos concerns the ‘theory choices’ made in ‘scientific revolutions’ and whether those choices are dictated by principles of scientific rationality.